The criminal complaint said a sheriff's investigator was asked to join a child protection social worker in an interview at West Side Elementary School in River Falls regarding a 7-year-old boy who had reported he was required to get up, have breakfast and get to school on his own. He had missed a number of days of school because he didn't make the bus.

The criminal complaint alleged the 7-year-old boy and his 3-year-old brother, who lived with their mother, Quinn, and a maternal grandmother at 530 County M, had been locked in their rooms for long periods of time without access to food, water or a bathroom.

On Feb. 4 when the interview was to take place, the boy was not at school and the investigator and social worker went to the residence. The older boy answered the door and the younger boy was locked in his bedroom screaming and the mother was in another bedroom. The 3-year-old had been in the bedroom from about 8 p.m. the previous evening until the investigator arrived at 10:15 a.m. and had not eaten breakfast, the complaint said.

The grandmother told investigators Quinn had been depressed. She said her daughter had dropped off the children for a weekend in 2006 and didn't return for several months. Quinn came back into her children's lives and moved in with the grandmother in 2007, according to the complaint.